The rise of a new vouth movement
16 and the right to organize independ. ently. At the same time, we are trying to give impetus to the formation of a youth organization independent of the parties that will be a product of the selforganization of the young people in their neighborhoods. This process
Interview with Fourth Internationalist
The following interview was given to Gerry Foley in May in Paris by
Sergio Rodriguez, a leader of the Partido Revolucionario de los Trabajadores (PRT Revolutionary Workers Party), the Mexican section of the Fourth International.
Question. What has the International
Year of Youth meant for you in Mexico?
Answer. The United Nations declared this year the International Year of Youth.
The government has been organizing commemorations similar to those held to mark the International Year of Women.
Obviously, its intention is to use these to present itself as the great patron of
For this purpose, it has invited representatives of the youth organizations the legally recognized participate.
So, since the PRT is a legally registered party, our youth organization was invited to the ceremony inaugurating the commemorations. They discussed whether or not to participate. Finally, it decided to do so in order to use all the assemblies for the International Year of Youth and all the events associated with it to make known the problems and opinions of Mexican youth, to point up their criticisms of the Mexican goverment and of the system that exists internationally. They also wanted to publicize the struggles that are being waged in our region, fundamentally in Central
Ten members of our youth organization were in the presiding committee of the inaugural meeting of the International invitation to speak of Rosario Ibarra de Piedra, who is the mother of a political "missing person." "disappeared" more than nine years ago.
chair of the Association of "Missing Persons."
By having Rosario's daughter invited, Youth on the streets... (DR)
we wanted to point up the fact that the Mexican government cannot present itself as the defender of the interests of Mexican
"missing" were under the age of 25 when they were disappeared.
We wanted to make sure that an importof the Mexican youth who
"disappeared"
represented in this affair.
So, from the start we showed how we intend to celebrate this year, and we will take a similar attitude in all the ceremonies to be held throughout the country. For example, in a commemoration in the state of Michoacan, there were representatives of the youth organizations of the Communist Parties of Poland, Czechosovakia, and the Soviet Union, along with diplomats from these countries. While they were speaking, we raised a Solidarnosc banner. They protested about this to the Organizing Committee. And so it was decided that there should be a debate between them and us. They did not show were able to speak to a large group of young people and explain Solidarnose's objectives and all democratic demands of Polish workers.
In other states, we have used forums to denounce repression in Guatemala and El Salvador. At the same time, we are working in a coordinating committee that is not official but represents people's and left organizations. It is also organizing public meetings on the International Year of Youth.
Since this year is also an election year Mexico, we are using our campaign to raise a series of demands for youth, such as the right to vote at has been developing in most cities.
What sort of demands are these young people raising?
for the right to vote at
16. Another is for the right to a job. A third is for the right to organize independently. Because in Mexico when five or six young people gather in a street, the police immediately attack them, just because they have congregated.
They are also demanding the right to their own culture, their own forms of expression, their music, etc., and obviously democratic rights in general.
Q. Why do they have to demand the right to their own culture?
A. In Mexico, rock concerts are banned. As soon as one starts, the cops come and start beating up both the musicians and the audience. The same thing happens at Latin American music festivals. What the government wants to prevent at any cost is more than
500 or 600 young people gathering in one place.
Obviously, such gatherings would open the way for political awakening. For example, we have had concerts in solidarity with Salvador. And the cops come and break them up.
These youth also have their own forms of literature. And the government has a campaign supposedly in defense of the language, as if it were a crime just to write in a different way, to express yourself in a different way.
Q How long has this new youth movement been developing?
A. For six or seven years. new youth culture has come fundamentally from northern Mexico, from the area bordering on the US. It is a product of Mexicans who have gone to the US but instead of assimilating North American culture have created their own. This is a continuation of the tradition started by Mexicans who went to the US in the 1930s and 1940s and were subjected to repression because of the way they dressed and talked. It was such people that the US Marines attacked during the Second World War Zoot-Suit Riots. There street party in a section of Los Angeles, went there looking "Zoot-Suiters" to beat up. This tradition was continued by a current among the Chicanos (1), called the Cholos, and today it is being carried on by the youth
Mexico that I referred to. These youth go by various
International Viewpoint 17 June 1985
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MEXICO,
names. Some still call themselves "Cholos," others call themselves "gangs."
Q. Does this determination on the part of the police to break up gatherings of youth have anything to do with the mass demonstrations for democratic rights in 1968, which were ended by a massacre of demonstrators by the police in which many young people were killed? I remember that caused a great shock in the country. One magazine carried pictures of bodies of slaughtered teenagers stacked like cord wood under the caption, "The Future of Mexico!"
A. Yes this repression essentially dates from 1968. The government wants to keep young people from getting together at any price, in order to keep anything like 1968 from getting started again. But it has gotten worse. They have started stopping young people from gathering even where they live. The cops are always raiding the neighborhoods. And the authorities have been pushing a campaign on TV, on radio, and in the movies against these young people, portraying them as juvenile delinquents, antisocial elements, rebels without a cause, etc., trying to set the population against them.
Q. So. how have the youth organized?
A. They have organized the Consejo Popular Juvenil (Young People's Council), which has demanded the right to organize and to participate in political activity, to combat police repression. It started because some young people got the idea that the fighting among the many young gangs that exist in Mexico should stop, that in order to defend their neighborhoods it was necessary to unite against the police. It was this idea of very elementary self-defense that led to the formation of the Consejo.
Today, these youth have their own magazine, called La Pared ("The Wall").
Q. Does the name come from the
Cuban revolutionary expression?
A. No, actually it comes from a rock number by Pink Floyd.
Q. What does the Consejo Popular
Juvenil represent?
A. Fundamentally, it represents youths who had been involved in robbing people "youth," I mean teenagers from and fighting. When
I say
10 to 18. When they get older than
18, they are expelled from the gangs, they are considered already old people.
These youth are very poor, from working-class neighborhoods and from concentrations where people have little or no employment. Some of them work
They call in industry panchitos," which is a very but very themselves traditional Mexican name.
International Viewpoint 17 June 1985
Does that have anything to do with Pancho Villa the revolutionary leader?
No. Well, it does have something to do with it. After Pancho Villa, a lot of people named their sons Pancho. And so these youth have taken a name that seems to them to represent the Mexican people.
Q. Is there any consciously political aspect to this organization?
A. Once these youth organized, they began to not their conflicts private individuals but with with government and the police. They started to participate in left demonstrations. They in the committees in defense of El Salvador and Nicaragua, repression. They even began to take part in rallies in support of Solidarnosc. They developed relations with the left parties, especially with us. We recruited some of them.
Q What actually makes up the Consejo? What impact has it had on the neighborhoods where these youth live?
A. It is made up of delegates from the various gangs. It organizes assemblies. For example, before, there were problems between the parents and the young people. The parents did not understand the rebellion of their children. But after the Consejo was formed, its started sponsoring meetings with the parents. They were also attended by a lot of sociologists, psychologists, and other specialists.
So, today the relations between the parents and the young people are much better. The parents are generally unemployed or have little work. The economic crisis has also had a big effect in changing their outlook. They have begun to understand what the origin of the problem is. It isn't that their anything like that but that the authorities children are juvenile delinquents or have driven them to desperation.
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